


Favors

by Rydain



Category: The Breakfast Club (1985)
Genre: Awkwardness, Bonding, Drama, Gen, Humor, Mentions of canon abuse, Optimism, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rydain/pseuds/Rydain
Summary: Vernon figured Bender deserved some sort of thanks, even if he was looking more self-satisfied than he ought to. He managed a tight smile with his nod as that damn wind kicked back up again, as he shuddered at its bite through wool blazer and how much worse he imagined it was through that threadbare flannel."Are you walking home in that?"Bender seemed almost afraid to answer. Or maybe even to go home, and maybe that was why he was still here."No, you're not. Get in."
Comments: 16
Kudos: 81
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Favors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kangeiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/gifts).



They had a deal. 

A gentlemen's agreement, not that they would call it in any terms that could possibly be taken as civil. Not when Vernon ruled Shermer High like a warden in the leisure-suited throes of midlife crisis, and he took Bender to be somewhere in the realm of dogshit to scrape off his loafers. Not that Bender gave any real fraction of a fuck, except maybe when it hit close enough to home to actually hurt. When Vernon was supposed to be the adult in the room, and a reminder of such only bought Bender another Saturday in lockup.

Not expulsion, which would be too easy. Too long coming after every basketball faceoff gone to brawling, every false alarm and bona fide garbage fire. Too demanded by every vulgar scrawl of graffiti in the stall Bender claimed as his smoking lounge, on a locker there had long since been no point in repainting. Just as Bender had no real reason to be here, but he showed up just enough to get by. A bug up Vernon's crack, daring him to bring down the boot once and for all, and maybe that was why he didn't.

Maybe that was why Bender had passed by the seat of his shredded Levi's, like his halfway decent shop grades might count for something after all. Like Vernon was cutting him a break just to prove he could, unless he was setting him up to fail with one last wag of finger.

_Just stay the hell out of my way._

* * *

Bender did, for the most part, out of sight and off the radar - or shrugged off as some unfortunate accident of lunchroom traffic, at least well enough to get away with a stink eye. Which was about all it was worth in terms of repaid satisfaction, which was about on the level of scrounging for roaches when his re-up was hung up in transit.

Which was very much worth the wait at whatever southern borders it must have sneaked across, and hell if Bender was about to waste it getting wasted on the can. He almost blew it regardless, right into a stiff wind cutting clear across a parking lot that should have been quiet as this last gray gasp of late fall afternoon. Right over to where Vernon was breaking the peace, grumbling a streak at his red BMW. Banging on the door, kicking a tire for good measure before going back at some business with what Bender pegged as a straightened clothes hanger as he snuffed his smoke on his way in for a look.

Vernon could have told Bender to fuck off and go home, taken a sniff at his faded flannel. Instead he stopped and stared for a good long second before deciding to pop him a quiz. "What does this look like to you?"

"Some sort of a trick question, sir."

Vernon kept on keeping on, failing to thread the wire between the window and door frame, or maybe even to notice that it was bent all wrong to hook the door latch. Like it was done with bare hands instead of pliers, like Vernon would have any reason to know better until it was too late for any other option.

"For one thing, that's not going to work. You already knew that, so that's stating the obvious. Which, of course, would be disrespectful."

As Bender arguably was being by stretching the terms of their truce like this, not that Vernon seemed to care. Not when his keys were still stuck in the ignition and the wind was getting sharp enough for Bender to button up over Judas Priest and thermals, not that it particularly helped.

"You'd ask how I know, but you already do. So then you ask if I can do better."

"I don't have to ask that." Vernon offered the wire with a smooth flip of wrist, and neither threat of poke nor feint of keep away. "I know."

"There we have it. There's the trick. Grand theft auto, caught in the act." Bender coiled the doubly useless hanger into a makeshift handcuff. "Or breaking and entering. Same difference."

"Only if you did, in fact, happen to break it."

"And if I didn't?"

Vernon gave Bender a long and puzzled look like he was being asked to state the obvious. Bender matched his stare until he finally did.

"So will you get on with it, or what?"

* * *

Vernon should have called for a tow or a locksmith, called in the professional cavalry instead of failing at yet another form of handiwork that had only looked to be stupidly simple. Wrecking a coat hanger and scratching his paint, stubbing his toe and scuffing his shoe when that damn temper flared up before he could trip a breaker on its short circuit. Right in front of one John Bender, nonetheless, who wasn't supposed to be standing here with that rapt hollow stare between those overgrown curtains of bangs as if about to crack some joke he had been holding in since summer. Unless he was, in some sense of situational irony, a criminal peddling his services above board and off the record.

A good show, as Vernon had to admit, halfway expecting Bender to extract a slim jim from some sagging pocket of denim. Instead he unwound a shoelace to be tied into a slipknot and slid between window and door gasket. Then slowly worked down to a steady focused whistle, and Vernon found himself holding his breath as a-hunting Bender went, as the noose closed in to catch the door latch and pop it.

"Voila. Open Sesame." Bender opened the door with a theatrical bow. "Your chariot awaits, sir." 

Vernon figured Bender deserved some sort of thanks, even if he was looking more self-satisfied than he ought to. He managed a tight smile with his nod as that damn wind kicked back up again, as he shuddered at its bite through wool blazer and how much worse he imagined it was through that threadbare flannel.

"Are you walking home in that?"

Bender seemed almost afraid to answer. Or maybe even to go home, and maybe that was why he was still here.

"No, you're not. Get in."

* * *

They didn't go home, or even in that general direction. Not after Vernon asked what was for dinner and Bender told him to check the trash, and Vernon's nose twitched like he had gone and stuck his head in it to see if Bender was joking. Madonna gave way to a motormouth pitch for used Pontiacs before Vernon found something to say to that, a suggestion of burgers that almost sounded halfway sympathetic through the reflexive growl of Bender's stomach.

"Relax, will you? This isn't the Ritz."

It was the Parkview Diner, as per the plastic menu on a paper mat over a table of some vinyl excuse for wood grain peeled straight off the sides of a station wagon. Not like there was a park, or a view beyond this tired little rinkadink strip mall, or that it mattered when Bender had no real idea of what deal he might be making with the devil in exchange for an upgrade from cold pot pie. Or what else to do but light up after a questioning show of his battered pack of Camels, and a tilt of offer refused with an upraised hand and three clucks of tongue to make sure the memo was received.

"I quit that shit. You'll do the same if you know what's good for you."

"I didn't know you were so concerned about my lung capacity, sir."

"It's not personal. Well, not entirely." Vernon made some excessive display of studying the menu. "Why do I even look? I know what I'm getting."

"What are you getting?"

"You first, being that you're my guest." Vernon caught the eye of a nearby waitress with a commanding uptick of chin and eyebrows. "Technically speaking, at least."

Bender threw some mental dice and landed on a cheeseburger, feeling a bit of a head spin himself as orders were placed and Cokes swiftly delivered. The word was all business and qualified as such. But it was hardly sarcastic, maybe even diplomatic, and not at all expected regardless.

"You're still wearing that thing?"

Bender slipped off the coat hanger bracelet he hadn't gotten around to disposing of. "I take a certain pride in my handiwork, sir."

"I wouldn't take much pride in that."

"That was a joke." Bender rolled his flannel up to the elbow, flashing what he figured it might be fun to take this cue to show. "This is what I had in mind."

Vernon put down his Coke, which he had been sipping through a straw like he was about to stick out a pinky for maximum priss, and craned his neck at the cuff of metal over waffle sleeve. The chains woven from scraps of wire while waiting for a go at the lathe or the jigsaw, for Mr. Larkin to finish knocking sense into some goggles-deficient knucklehead on a fast track to losing a finger. "You made that?"

"I'm making it. It's more like a work in progress."

"Huh. I never knew you had the patience."

"I didn't. I was bored." Bender wasn't sure how to explain how calming it was to work like that, to make something so even and delicate. How it kept his hands from itching for a light, or to light into some buttoned-up brownie hound whose mere presence struck a match somewhere deep in his stomach. "I thought this would be a constructive use of my time."

"You thought? I guess you did." Vernon showed the vaguest twitch of smile. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you, young man?"

"I have my limits of being predictable."

Food arrived and got halfway into Bender's system before he figured it might be good to slow down before Vernon told him to, to stub out a smoke he felt no real need to pick back up. To enjoy this moment, a rare chance to eat a hot meal in peace, or at least in a ceasefire that was turning out to be rather agreeable. Amusing, even, with Vernon cutting his steak into a grid like it was some sort of math problem.

"Good burger?"

Bender nodded through a greasy cheesy mouthful a solid notch above McDick's. "Good steak?"

"It's sufficient at best." 

"So it could be worse."

"It's edible, so yes." Vernon held up a piece for both inspection and presentation. "Even if it's not so much food as shoe leather."

Bender shrugged. "Still better than getting a boot up your ass so far you can taste it."

"Still?" Vernon laughed as if trying to shake off his end of a past year of shoves and spat insults and threats of extracurricular violence, of Bender getting the worst of a bad side he had seemed to be on by default. "I won't ask if you're not about to tell."

Springsteen came on with that spare and searing intro, and Bender wondered how many of the varsity letterheads cruising top down with their American born pride on full blast had bothered to read the lyrics on the slipcover. How many had an old man who had been to Saigon and done that and been haunted by the ghost of Agent Orange ever since, and took every last brutal excuse to take it out on his own son like he was the one screaming out in his nightmares for exorcism.

"Good singer." Vernon nodded. "Good song."

"It is. A funny sort of song, if you think about it."

Vernon cocked his head, daring Bender to explain. Biting the hook just set for him, a leadup to an answer in mind.

"How does it sound if you listen halfway? Just the music. Not the words, except for the obvious."

Vernon shrugged at said obvious as he grooved a bit to that catchy titular lick. "Patriotic."

"It does, doesn't it? But that's not what it's about. It's the story of a man who started off like he was nothing. Got told that he was nothing. And when he tried to do better? He got fucked."

Vernon flinched around his mouthful of steak as Bender realized just how loudly he had been letting off steam. As his own unoccupied mouth kept going, seizing this chance to push him off further. This moment of uninterruption, of immunity from some reflex of a comeback.

"Oh, he should have just known better, just like everyone else. Sit down and shut up. Sit still and eat shit. Don't fight back when your old man drops you instead of saying what the fuck you did wrong. Even if it was nothing. Just like you."

Bender reeled from a mix of relief and regret, bracing himself for Vernon to call bullshit. Instead Vernon grimaced like he was biting into a spot of gristle, or maybe thinking about what he could say to that. What he should say that wouldn't make it worse, like when Coach Jackson had called home about the square bruise on Bender's arm and sent his head swimming from the sucker punch for three days straight.

Vernon finally managed something without managing to look Bender in the eye. "You aren't nothing."

"I'm not? That's news to me. Especially from you. Sir."

Bender waited for Vernon to plead the Fifth or outright lie, to twist himself some way of being right. Unless he was remembering just as well, those same exact words still ringing in Bender's head. A gutless turd. A lying sack of shit, like a former math teacher was that unclear on exact quantity of fecal matter.

"I was angry. Frustrated. Stuck there in school with you kids. Wasting time. Solving nothing. Unless that finally sank in for you. Did it?"

"Maybe. I was angry, too. Maybe angry enough to prove you wrong."

"Is that why you've been so quiet?"

Bender flattened his paper straw wrapper with a slow smooth draw between thumbnail and finger, folding it into a star so he didn't have to think about how to answer that.

"It isn't something to talk about, is it? Not so easy to put into words."

"Not when they'll be thrown right back at you. Engraved on your permanent record. Filed away in the basement until the natural heat death of the universe."

Vernon fired back like a reflex. "That's bullshit."

"I'll believe that when I see it. You know me. You know who I am. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect your fucking pittance." Bender wadded his straw paper into a spitball. "I don't even know why I try."

"Yes, you do, and you know it."

"Do you?"

Vernon gave a quizzical look as Hall and Oates went on about being out of touch, thrown off guard for once with a question thrown right back at him. "You really want to know what I see in you."

"Not much. I know that. But I'm guessing that's more than you used to." Bender idly adjusted his chain cuff, trying to remember the last time Vernon had joked about the exact number of years he would someday be doing in Sheridan. "More than the old man and the incubator, at least."

"Why do you say that?"

Bender tried to think how he might possibly explain it. How Vernon hadn't expelled him, and maybe was keeping him around for some purpose beyond his personal punching bag. Kept telling him to figure himself out, to sort out his shit. To think about it, like Bender could be trusted to, and had the capacity to in the first place. Like he was something more than just a dead end, a terminal fuckup, a broken condom or a missed pill.

"You figured I was worth a burger."

Vernon gave a surprised sort of laugh. "That's it?"

"That's more of a question for you, sir."

* * *

Vernon had no answer to said question, even when they got to the point where Bender was mopping up ketchup with a half burnt nub of fry and eyeing the leftover half of Vernon's mashed potatoes as if he might still be hungry enough to eat glorified mattress foam. Maybe it was some sense of duty, repayment of a serendipitous favor. Or his own obligation to listen for once, to take the chance of not liking what he might be about to hear. To welcome it, perhaps, as its own sort of tit for tat, fair trade for his failure to keep these damn kids in line, feeling them slip more and more out of his hands every year ticking toward retirement.

"You sure I don't owe you, sir?"

"As I said, it's on the house." Vernon counted out a short stack of bills and coins up to and including exactly fifteen percent of tip. "It's the least I could do for you, really."

"It's appreciated."

"So was the roadside assistance. The candor, too, painful as that was." Vernon regretted that needless reminder as Bender flinched with a reflexive curl of fingers. "The trust, I should say. I wasn't expecting as much."

Bender was back to that guarded posture he had sat down with, the contrition he showed across the office desk on rare occasions of best behavior, as if they were back in school once again with all the distance of power inherent. "What were you expecting, sir?"

"A steak somewhat better than functional, but sometimes you get what you get." Vernon cast a glance at the slight traces of sauce remaining. "Though I can't say I'm disappointed."

"So it actually was better than shoe leather?" Bender gave a half smile at the napkin dispenser. "Regardless of the method of delivery."

Vernon paid the incoming waitress with instructions to keep the change as he considered the least awkward way to express some appreciation for company, for validating what his stubborn spark of optimism had wanted to believe. That Bender had more going on upstairs beyond the knowhow to wreak maximum havoc with cleaning supplies filched from the janitor's cart, maybe even enough to care about doing better for himself. Maybe Vernon cared, too, as if respect could be earned more so than demanded. As if that sounded better to him than he might publicly admit, and felt as good as it might very well end up looking to those responsible for cutting his paycheck.

"Let's go with that."

* * *

Vernon slowed at the corner of Glenwood and Dunkirk, squinting at a door plaque in dim porchlight. "What's the number again?"

"You can let me out here."

"It's no trouble. Really."

"But it could be."

"Why?" Vernon snorted. "I wasn't going to knock."

"I know."

Vernon had already pulled over like he got what Bender was getting at, that narrow but nonzero chance of being seen in school custody. Like he wanted to say something, or figured he should, tensed up all over again after unclenching his nether regions for once. Which Vernon finally did, with a firm clap on the arm that almost felt congenial, as Bender unlatched a seat belt he normally saw no point in wearing.

"Stay safe in there. You got it?"

Bender threw Vernon a nod as he jumped out into a slap of cold that put a spring in his usual saunter. The incubator's Pinto was absent, the old man passed out with the Bears on the tube and an aluminum pyramid of empties on the coffee table. Still Bender sneaked under the window and around back, shimmying up the drain pipe onto the roof above the cracked concrete patio. He opened a bedroom window that had once been painted shut, sliding in head first to give Vernon a show if he happened to be watching. Which Vernon was, in a distant pool of streetlight, as Bender took a look back just to see.

And as Vernon drove by, he waved.

**Author's Note:**

> I was stoked to match on this prompt with all the hope for the future it suggested. I love to find new and surprising ways for difficult characters to relate, leading them to listen to each other and get along for their mutual benefit. Bender - with his comedic eloquence, steel trap osmosis of assorted facts and details, and insight into high school hellscape psychology - has more capacity for forward analytic thinking than people might give him credit for. I wanted him to earn some of that credit as he sets himself up for sorting his shit out. I also hoped to bring out some plausible hints of sympathy within Vernon's challenging personality, inspired by the leadership insecurities behind his authoritarian bully facade.
> 
> Thanks so much for the fantastic inspiration to dig back into this '80s classic and intriguing rivalry!


End file.
